Orgies of Greeks and Romans: What’s Really There – 7/9/2023 – Science

Orgies evoke images of Greco-Roman antiquity, due to more or less erotic films starring wanton emperors —or the film Satyricon (1969), by Federico Fellini.

The term is currently used to describe all kinds of excess. To us, the orgy seems like an absolute celebration of the pleasures of the flesh in an ancient society, freed from moral constraints.

But what were orgies, really?

from Greek orgy

The word comes from the Greek. Orgy refers to rituals performed in honor of deities such as Dionysus, whose cult celebrated the regeneration of nature.

These cults were known as “mystery cults”, that is, reserved for initiated men and women who previously pledged not to divulge their secrets.

The word “orgy” evokes an idea of ​​passion and excitement. The rites of the orgies, little known due to their mysterious status, may have included the manipulation of objects with a sexual format during practices of ecstasy and violence, whose objective would have been to seek collective intoxication.

Only at the end of the 18th century and throughout the 19th century, especially in French literature, did the term “orgy” come to designate group sexual practices, generally associated with excessive food and alcoholic beverages.

The French writer Gustave Flaubert (1821-1880), in his short story Smarh (1839), refers to “a nocturnal party, an orgy full of naked women, beautiful as Venus”.

Whores… and fish

But the orgy as an event is not a modern invention. Banquets that combined food and erotic pleasures are well documented in ancient texts.

In the 4th century BC, for example, the Greek orator Aeschines, in his speech Against Timarchus, accused his enemy of having indulged in “the most shameful pleasures of voluptuousness” and “all the things a free and noble man should not indulge in.” let it sink in”.

What were these forbidden pleasures? Timarco invited flutists and other venal women to his house and promoted parties with them.

It should be noted that the flutists, in this case, are not mere artists, summoned only for their musical talent, but also young prostitutes, willing to satisfy the sexual demands of the guests.

As well as hiring courtesans, the consumption of fish, which was very expensive, was the object of special attention by orators in the 4th century BC. Demosthenes combines these two facets of debauchery in his speech On a False Embassy.

In the year 346 BC, the city of Athens had sent ambassadors to King Philip II of Macedon, threatening Greece militarily. But the sovereign had bribed some of the Athenian envoys to support his imperialist ambitions.

Demosthenes accused one of the ambassadors, bribed by the Macedonian king, of having squandered the corruption money on “whores and fish” – a double crime of gluttony, both sexual and food.

the roman debauchery

Roman historians also describe sumptuous feasts that combined sex and food.

In the 80s BC, the Roman dictator Sulla would have been the first political leader in Rome to organize sex parties. He would have imported the model from the Greek East, where he had conducted a military campaign.

Plutarch reports in his biography of Sulla that the dictator began drinking in the morning with actresses, musicians and mimes.

Lewd choreography was a complementary activity practiced by courtesans, so it was not uncommon for prostitutes to work as mimes. They squirmed, sometimes simulating sexual acts.

The Latin historian Suetonius presents Tiberius as the personification of the libertine emperor. In his palace on Capri, he organized daring pornographic shows.

Tiberius had recruited a group of young actors who, before his own eyes, indulged in matings known as spintriae – a Latin term, most likely formed from the Greek sphinktèr (“anus”), which refers to serial sodomy.

Suetonius claims that Caligula, successor to Tiberius, slept with his sisters in full view of his guests. Incestuous and exhibitionist, he thus transgressed two prohibitions at the same time.

Caligula also showed his wife Caesonia on horseback, dressed as a warrior or totally naked. Suetonius recounts that the empress, her husband’s accomplice, greatly appreciated these special sessions, as she “was lost in debauchery and vice”.

About 20 years later, Emperor Nero “caused his feasts to last from noon to midnight,” according to Suetonius.

During these long feasts, all the senses had to be satisfied. It was a symphony of food and music and servile bodies to be looked at or caressed as slaves rained flowers from the hall ceiling and sprayed perfume.

It is said that during one of the banquets promoted by Emperor Elagabalus, around the year 220 AD, some guests would have died of suffocation “for not having been able to free themselves”, as narrated by the author of the book História Augusta.,

But these feasts were no more common in the Roman Empire than they are today.

Hence we must not be mistaken about the meaning of the descriptions of orgies given by ancient writers. The objective is always moral: to condemn “debauchery” in the name of moderation and temperance.

The Christian Denunciation

The Christianization of the Roman Empire only reinforced this moral perspective. A good example is in the work of St. Augustine, in Sermon 16 on the Beheading of John the Baptist.

The evocation of the feast of Herod Antipas, governor of Galilee, and its large quantity of food highlights the gluttony of the guests. Added to this is the idea that lust is exclusively the work of Satan.

Antipas asks his great-niece Salome to dance. And, after showing off her breasts in her frenetic choreography, the evil young woman demands the head of Saint John the Baptist, served on a platter, as payment for her charms.

From Rome to Babylon

Breaking with these ancient texts, the film Babilônia (2022), by Damien Chazelle, presents a large orgy scene, without clearly adopting a posture of moral condemnation.

Perhaps that’s one of the reasons it received such mixed reception from audiences – while critics denounced the film as scandalous, admirers praised it as a miraculous “visual orgy”.

This text was originally published here.

Christian-Georges Schwentzel is professor of ancient history at the University of Lorraine, France, and author of the book “Débauches antiques, comment la Bible et les Ancients ont inventé le vice” (“Ancient Depravities, How the Bible and the Ancients Invented Vice “, in free translation).

This article originally appeared on The Conversation academic news site and is republished here under a Creative Commons license. Read the original version in Spanish and French.